Latest on MJJC

Has the Thriller album become underrated on this forum?

analogue

Proud Member
Joined
Jul 25, 2011
Messages
8,245
Points
113
I know that putting the words underrated and Thriller together is insane, but does anyone else feel that it's become a little underrated here? I think because it's talked about so much within the media and general public there's been a fan backlash toward it. So we don't talk about that often

I've seen more threads here about Invincible than what I see about Thriller
 
Possibly. I know it's ages since I listened to it completely.

But the reasons why there are more threads on Invincible is because we all pretty much agree how great Thriller, Bad and Dangerous are. And it's hard to have a discussion when we all agree on something.

The whole of the album is pretty much perfect and for me, it's not the big hits like Beat It or Billie Jean, it's WBSS and PYT. It's also lovely and carefree and as much as I love and prefer his later work, it's nice to hear OTW and Thriller before he got darker and more jaded.

The album changed the world and you can count those on one hand.
 
analogue said:
I know that putting the words underrated and Thriller together is insane, but does anyone else feel that it's become a little underrated here? I think because it's talked about so much within the media and general public there's been a fan backlash toward it. So we don't talk about that often

I've seen more threads here about Invincible than what I see about Thriller
Click to expand...


I think it's because everything that can be said about Thriller has been said. Outside of the fan community it gets treated as if it's the only good album he ever made.


Not only that, nine times out of ten when you a hear an MJ song on the radio, it'll be a song from Thriller. When was the last time you heard Jam or Scream or Blood On The Dancefloor on the radio? I think Thriller gets the props it deserves. It's albums like Destiny, Triumph, Dangerous, HIStory and Invincible which don't.



I don't think anyone on this board would say that Thriller is anything other than a masterpiece, but what's left to say about it? It's the most talked about and celebrated album of all time.
 
analogue said:
I know that putting the words underrated and Thriller together is insane, but does anyone else feel that it's become a little underrated here? I think because it's talked about so much within the media and general public there's been a fan backlash toward it. So we don't talk about that often

I've seen more threads here about Invincible than what I see about Thriller
Click to expand...

To be honest, I feel that Invincible is talked about so often and more so than Thriller in the fan community because a lot of fans don't like how Invincible was received when it was released, and his seen as a disappointment by many. I think it comes from a need to defend it because of this, to show that it's misunderstood, and that it really was affected by a lack of promotion.

Lack of promotion or not, it was Michael Jackson and you don't get more publicised than that. The album did very well, but compared to Michael's standards, I'm afraid the music did the talking.

With comparing it to Thriller, maybe its due to the fact that it's the one album that the fanbase don't need to protect because of its status. It's just a kind of theory I have- I'm not trying to insult ANYONE by saying this but a lot of what I read about Invincible is a bit over the top for me and I can't see how a lot of the songs can even be compared with his best work.

Thriller still sells by the bucketload and rightfully so. It is a landmark record and a piece of history. The production, songwriting, vocals, track selection are all perfect. It came at the right time and to me split music into 2 testaments- Before Thriller and After Thriller. Thriller re-defined music, artistry and entertainment. Thriller is not my number one album but you can be damn well sure that without Thriller the Michael Jackson story would be missing it's nucleus.
 
innuendo141 said:
To be honest, I feel that Invincible is talked about so often and more so than Thriller in the fan community because a lot of fans don't like how Invincible was received when it was released, and his seen as a disappointment by many. I think it comes from a need to defend it because of this, to show that it's misunderstood, and that it really was affected by a lack of promotion.

Lack of promotion or not, it was Michael Jackson and you don't get more publicised than that. The album did very well, but compared to Michael's standards, I'm afraid the music did the talking.

With comparing it to Thriller, maybe its due to the fact that it's the one album that the fanbase don't need to protect because of its status. It's just a kind of theory I have- I'm not trying to insult ANYONE by saying this but a lot of what I read about Invincible is a bit over the top for me and I can't see how a lot of the songs can even be compared with his best work.

Thriller still sells by the bucketload and rightfully so. It is a landmark record and a piece of history. The production, songwriting, vocals, track selection are all perfect. It came at the right time and to me split music into 2 testaments- Before Thriller and After Thriller. Thriller re-defined music, artistry and entertainment. Thriller is not my number one album but you can be damn well sure that without Thriller the Michael Jackson story would be missing it's nucleus.
Click to expand...

Ooooh, I predict a fierce debate coming up about the merits of Invincible on our podcast show!!!
 
Thriller is an outstanding album but is not by any measure of the imagination Michael's strongest record.

As others have said I find it unnecessary to give Thriller much praise considering the general population consistently clamor over it.
 
Thriller is overrated in general.
People talk about other stuff because Thriller is the one that always gets talked about to death.
 
I think a lot of artists have this problem: they have a flagship album that is ackownleged and hyped by the general public but that does not necessarily mean it is their best album. And yes it may frustrate the artist and hard core fans that the general public ignores or gives a lot less attention to everything else, but it's not specific to MJ only. It's a general attitude that people have.

Having said that, Thriller is a great album and I'm glad it's still on the charts after 32 years, so I do not mind MJ having this flagship. Hopfully it can introduce at least some people to Michael and get them interested in more.
 
A lot of this thread dismays me and shows me how taken for granted some of us are of Thriller.

Whilst I agree he bettered it with Bad & Dangerous, please try & remember how ground changing this was (maybe you have to have lived through it, I don't know?).

7 out the 9 were singles (mostly Top 10)

This album had:

BILLIE JEAN
BEAT IT
HUMAN NATURE
WANNA BE STARTIN' SOMETHIN'

Not to mention other great tracks like P.Y.T., Thriller, Lady In My Life, Baby Be Mine & The Girl Is Mine.

Not a bad track there.

Even non MJ fans will know virtualy every track on this album. You can't say that about any other album in history (except maybe Bad!).

Not to mention the songs, but everything that went with it:

Thriller video
Billie Jean & Beat It videos
Motown 25

It launched a new level of pop music & stardom that has set the bench ever since and no-one else can come near.

But even forgetting all that, the music on this album is phenomenal. Look at the tracks I mentioned.

Yes, he has bettered it but I can fully see why this is the album that people still refer to as 'The One'.
 
I think Tony R and respect77 have raised some valid points. I do think it is all too easy to take Thriller for granted as a fan. When you actually sit down and listen to it from beginning to end it is pretty much a flawless record. Songs like Billie Jean, Startin Somethin and Beat It are amongst the very best songs he ever recorded imo.


Thriller to some extend became a victim of its own success. In an alternate universe where Triumph had been an MJ solo release and became the biggest selling album of all time and songs like Heartbreak Hotel and Walk Right Now were given groundbreaking music videos and MJ debuted the moonwalk during Can You Feel It we would all be complaining about how the general public doesn't appreciate the genius of the Thriller album.


I guess the general public just latch on to an artists biggest hit and it seems to define them to a degree. But it's important to remember that Thriller only became the phenomenon it did because it really was THAT good. Thriller was the time the world woke up to what a true genius Michael Jackson was, which is why it's held in such high esteem. Had they not have caught on with Thriller, they eventually would've with Bad or Dangerous and then those albums would've been MJ's flagship album.
 
Basically everything Michael did from the start of his career up until Thriller is underrated among the hardcore fans, IMO. I put that down to a combination of his later work being what a lot of current MJ fans grew up with (so the warm memories are generally associated with those albums) and MJ having much greater creative influence on his post-Thriller than pre-Bad work.

In both cases, the 'bias' (if you call it that) is understandable.
 
Very underrated & taken for granted by fans. I know at times I've taken it for granted & at times been utterly bored by it, due to 30 years of it being held up as the representation of "the only thing Michael Jackson ever did" by the critics & media. Let me be clear: not bored by Thriller as a work of musical output, but by Thriller as a notion, this thing that people could use in a passive way to disregard everything else "Michael Jackson" without really knowing, or listening, or hearing. It became the predictable cliché from which the music press would bang over the heads of everyone whilst reviewing & rejecting subsequent albums, films & books etc.

The album became the be-all & end-all, the get out of jail card for musos on tv show panels when asked about MJ or pop music. I'm only speaking for myself, but I did get so tired over the years of constantly hearing or reading about nothing being as great as Thriller, & possibly, my way of rejecting these claims was to ignore the album, I was "a fan" and therefore, to a degree Thriller was only for the casual music listener, the ground floor entry level, or for the music critic who's mind was already made up about anything that came before or after, whereas I, as a fan on the inside had a whole world of incredible music, short-films etc that was equally as genius, sometimes even better.

It annoyed me that the theory was "the short-film Thriller was unsurpassable", even if this or that was better. I Think the other great misunderstanding about that album was that it was more than just an album per-say, it was a fashion accessory, a statement, to own this record on vinyl in the 80's was a measurement of cool, like the rubik's cube. In this day & age you have the i-phone, that thing that's become a statement about you, (who you are) or a status piece. Well Thriller tapped into peoples imaginations in that way, & subsequent albums that still managed to sell an unnatural amount, in there tens-of-millions were deemed "not a success" or in the case of ten-plus million for Invincible "a flop" which could not be further from the truth. Thriller has always been "that album" for good or bad. I listened to it recently and was blown away by it's brilliance.
 
aazzaabb;4072749 said:
Very underrated & taken for granted by fans. I know at times I've taken it for granted & at times been utterly bored by it, due to 30 years of it being held up as the representation of "the only thing Michael Jackson ever did" by the critics & media. Let me be clear: not bored by Thriller as a work of musical output, but by Thriller as a notion, this thing that people could use in a passive way to disregard everything else "Michael Jackson" without really knowing, or listening, or hearing. It became the predictable cliché from which the music press would bang over the heads of everyone whilst reviewing & rejecting subsequent albums, films & books etc.

The album became the be-all & end-all, the get out of jail card for musos on tv show panels when asked about MJ or pop music. I'm only speaking for myself, but I did get so tired over the years of constantly hearing or reading about nothing being as great as Thriller, & possibly, my way of rejecting these claims was to ignore the album, I was "a fan" and therefore, to a degree Thriller was only for the casual music listener, the ground floor entry level, or for the music critic who's mind was already made up about anything that came before or after, whereas I, as a fan on the inside had a whole world of incredible music, short-films etc that was equally as genius, sometimes even better.

It annoyed me that the theory was "the short-film Thriller was unsurpassable", even if this or that was better. I Think the other great misunderstanding about that album was that it was more than just an album per-say, it was a fashion accessory, a statement, to own this record on vinyl in the 80's was a measurement of cool, like the rubik's cube. In this day & age you have the i-phone, that thing that's become a statement about you, (who you are) or a status piece. Well Thriller tapped into peoples imaginations in that way, & subsequent albums that still managed to sell an unnatural amount, in there tens-of-millions were deemed "not a success" or in the case of ten-plus million for Invincible "a flop" which could not be further from the truth. Thriller has always been "that album" for good or bad. I listened to it recently and was blown away by it's brilliance.
Click to expand...

Good points A.

I think most massive fans of artists have the same issue though.

Huge Prince fans won't necessarily cite Purple Rain as his finest work.

My wife is a big Queen fan but dislikes all the big '80s tunes that the passive fan will cite as their best.

I'm a huge Madonna fan and think her work from 1992-2008 is much better than her popular '80s stuff.

At least with Michael they do talk about Bad as well.

Plus I somewhat 'blame' (for want of a better word) himself also.

Look at the Dangerous Tour for example. He did 5 songs from Thriller and only 4 from Dangerous!!

Or even VMA's 95. I know HIStory had a CD of greatest hits (which again proves the point) but why mostly back catalogue stuff and only half of YANA when he should have been promoting his new work.
 
Tony R said:
Good points A.

I think most massive fans of artists have the same issue though.

Huge Prince fans won't necessarily cite Purple Rain as his finest work.

My wife is a big Queen fan but dislikes all the big '80s tunes that the passive fan will cite as their best.

I'm a huge Madonna fan and think her work from 1992-2008 is much better than her popular '80s stuff.

At least with Michael they do talk about Bad as well.

Plus I somewhat 'blame' (for want of a better word) himself also.

Look at the Dangerous Tour for example. He did 5 songs from Thriller and only 4 from Dangerous!!

Or even VMA's 95. I know HIStory had a CD of greatest hits (which again proves the point) but why mostly back catalogue stuff and only half of YANA when he should have been promoting his new work.
Click to expand...

Whilst I agree you, I'm not entirely sure I've seen any other artist be so metaphorically beat over the head with a past effort to the extent of Thriller. That said, I've not seen any other album do, for any other artist, what Thriller did for MJ. There are tons of examples of course, but on that level. I think (as well received as Bad was) people in the media had an issue with the contrast of album sleeves 'Thriller he looks very handsome and authentic, Bad he looks very Hollywood, for want of a better expression and in their eye's their perception slowly begins to shift. Of course I think he looks amazing on the Bad album, but I'm wondering if the image-change played it's part in how they would judge future albums on a music level? Well I think it did. Perhaps not so much Bad, but from Dangerous onwards.

Yeah, I would have liked if MJ had taken a lot more risks for the live shows, dropped Thriller, Beat It, IJCSLY, SOOML, dropped the Motown Medley in favour of a young solo hit like ben or J5 song like GTBT and changed a few more things up, add to the setlist GITM, ITC & RTT. Despite the "issues" with the HIStory Tour, I thought the setlist was rather good.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top